


Just Secrets

by MischiefHowl



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Angst Plot, Deer!Lefou, Gen, No Plot/Plotless, Shapeshifter Lefou, Shifter!Lefou, seriously wrote this for no reason sooo if it doesn't make sense there you go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 12:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11148507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MischiefHowl/pseuds/MischiefHowl
Summary: There were secrets in small villages. Even from one that doesn't look like they can hold in any secrets. Yet Lefou always had a secret and it wasn't the secret love for his hunter.





	Just Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> The title makes it sound amazing I know. This just came to my head after watching Bambi. It has no plot other than the fact I wanted Lefou to be able to shape shift into a deer cause let's face it he'd be so a deer.   
> If you came for amazing plot, sorry, but this isn't plot D: if anything it was my attempt to do a warm up of these characters.

How long has he been with the hunter? Trailing after him like he was his mother? Lefou was not sure, twenty years? It sounds about right. Ever since that day...

Shaking himself from a darkening thought that threatened to break his cheerful expression, his eyes cast in the mirror once again. While to some it looks like he was admiring himself, to himself.. he was seeing what he had become. A friend of the hunter.. the most forbidden law, the most idiotic law... shattered because he loved a huma-

"Lefou? Stare any longer and you will burn a hole in the mirror" It was a teasing gesture of the man. "You're already handsome as it is." Hands reach behind and take the dark long hair to tie it back. Lefou was trying everything not to blush at the embarrassment and the compliment. Gaston saw something in Lefou that was nothing like a hunter. His beloved hunter.

"Thank you, Gaston." His hair was pulled back with gentle hands and tied in a black ribbon that still paled at the ponytail of Gaston. "I'm just very tired from today's hunt..." It wasn't a lie. He always was but not sleepy tired.. never that. His own hunt always was for the vegetation. Always missing his shot and giving the ego boost to his friend. Always saying he was the best hunter.. No. Lefou always missed on purpose. The rifle in his hand always caused an illness and pointing it at so much as a rabbit made him want to throw up all over the grass... 

"Of course. Be ready by dawn, we must hunt some stags." The words of his friend didn't go unheard as Lefou walked out the door. Outside the tavern he had to breathe in a deep breath.. When he got home he found himself slumping against the door, making sure it was locked and all curtains drawn like always.

It was only here he can truly be him. Here, alone.. he hand reached up and nearly shivered at the damned objects that revealed themselves to soon.. if he had spent another hour in the tavern. The idea of Gaston seeing them... these antlers on his dear friend. He felt like a long friendship wouldn't stop him from his instinct on firing his gun..

His eyes saw the mirror, seeing his antlers at top his head. Slowly but surely he allowed himself to strip down, brown eyes turning away. His clothing fell onto the floor and instead of a foot or hand that came down. It was thin hooves that clattered onto the wooden floor. What stood in the stout man's place was that of a fairly large deer that looked like he was eating a little to well. His ears lower at the sight of his true self in the mirror.   
Once again his mind became dark. As a fawn he could easily hide himself as a human boy.. but as stag.. he was having trouble. His antlers he was convinced were enchanted to show him cruelly what he was. And every time he painfully pulled and broken them off, crying every time but refusing to stop himself.. he always presented them to Gaston who saw them as trophies. Lefou had gladly given them, and Gaston assumed that Lefou was better hunting solo. Yet the truth was impossible. 

The stag was able to maneuver around his house and get on the bed. Lefou was truly a traitor to the Fawns. A deer that not only lived as a man but even had a hunter as a friend.. as a one sided love.. they were killed always before they could accuse him, still their eyes shown always before his friend killed it.

Lefou often had nightmares that his friend would come and see the deer instead of Lefou. The sound of the rifle always woke him up.. but sometimes they were dreams. Dark as they were he'd find his thoughts convincing him that his death would give his friend life.. His ears lower more. Truly he was a mad deer for falling in love with a human hunter... if anything he should have been plotting to kill the hunter.. take revenge for what the monster did. 

But he couldn't, not now. He'd come to terms that death must happen so others could live. Did they blame the wolves for taking one of their own down? No, because they understood that the beasts must eat to live. Yet they looked at humans with such hatred.. because humans many times never hunted out of hunger but for the fun of it. Still Lefou stayed in the village, enjoying human life. No one questioned him, no one picked fights with him, and above all (in his cowardly mind) no one aimed for the liver and shot from behind..

He shivered at the memories of the countless times Gaston killed unfairly. How nauseous it made him. It made him sick the first time he did shoot one of his own. He did it not for his friend but to silence the other. The deer he killed knew Lefou, bullied him.. and in a moment he thought he got revenge as well. But the realization had sunk in.. he tried countless times to convince himself he killed the other to make sure he couldn't change and warn Gaston. But it was in that moment that he chose a side.. and in the shadows around, all knew what he was now. Truly a traitor, a monster, and they damned him and told him on whispers of the wind he would never join them in the Great Woods when he died. No he'd be damned to the Dark Woods to forever roam.. it was that time Lefou screamed but in the torment, his friend was just as quickly there holding the shaking form and shushing him. He didn't congratulate him.. instead the hunter let him sob and hold him...

His friend didn't ever say anything about that day, never hinted that Lefou cried and screamed at his first and only shot. When Lefou first brought the antlers, he startled Gaston who had been convinced that the friend never would hunt again.. yet here beautiful antlers were. Lefou always said he gave the carcass to the butcher for the village.. always a lie his friend believed.... just like the lie Lefou was and always will be. And as he drifted off into slumber, he had a dream of Gaston sleeping on his large body, head resting against his side so to sleep and hear the deer's heartbeat of life. Could he ever say what he was? He wanted to show his friend.. show him what he was. But he was scared. Not of the reaction he'd receive, not of the accusations of sorcery that humanity were still frightened about... not even the bullet that could kill him. It was his soul.. death didn't frighten him. Damnation to the Dark Woods did. And yet he was content if it did happen he wanted Gaston to do it to him..

Often he wondered if one day he'd be in the woods, just enjoying himself, not sensing anyone. Until the shoot rang out and pain.. would Gaston not see Lefou in the deer? Would he gut him while barely alive? The overwhelming idea made the nightmare come of Gaston slicing into the stag who tried to plead with him. What than? He'd no longer see Lefou anywhere.. he'd be alone to suffer from war flashbacks and madness would overwhelm him without the little man there to calm him. That was what stopped him from confessing. That is what made him barely enter the woods until he knew for sure his fellow hunters were asleep.  
He'd die and feed them as nature should but the consequences would be there. So he repeated the morning as always.

Silently he became a man again, and whimpers come followed by some tears of pain as his hands break off the antlers once again, making sure he once again passed for a human, his baths made for sure he smelled nice, masking the scent of game, and clothes to wear. He repeated this routine in the village that never changes. Always laying down at night promising that the morning he'd say what he was... or his love for his hunter, and every morning that became day.. he was silent. Always will be.. 

\---

His heart had been broken by Gaston's betrayal. But he had still enough love left for him. The wolves were upon the man's body and Lefou could smell the blood and follow it instead of fleeing. He had went into the wolves with new antlers and purpose. Their teeth snapping and biting into him, causing a cry of agony but he didn't back down. His antlers and hooves became slick with blood as he managed to kill some wolves-  
The scarred one was the one that nearly had it's teeth around his throat. But he didn't give in, ignoring their questions on why he was protecting their meal. Lefou made no response, just fought.   
The wolves finally fled. The spell broken and it sent a wave through the castle and woods, the snow melting away under the sun. His form was bloody, covered in bites and scratches but the dark eyes of the dying man saw it all.. saw the deer fight off the wolves that were seconds away from granting him mercy. The deer was almost beautiful in the morning light as it breathed heavily. The light also seemed to heal the injuries that would have been it's death... but something shocking was what the once mad hunter saw in that same light.

The light passed over the deer and in the radiant light of gold. The deer became that of a man- not just any man- Lefou. Lefou with antlers that slowly faded away. The man was dying but it was not a trick of the light.. He tried to say the other's name but only coughs came out. The man was broken from the fall and it won't be long now. Lefou found wolves to save him.. but it was not going to help him live. Belle was that damned Beasts... he wanted to laugh bitterly. But still there was the short man who looked at Gaston. He was saying something... no.. begging for something-... forgiveness. He was weeping. He reached at touched at the unseen antlers. In the morning light, he could see Lefou in a sort of mysterious beauty he had not seen before.. or was his friend hiding it. Hiding it like he did in that animal form.. how he wanted to ask why he could become a deer. He quickly stopped himself from thinking trophy..

Lefou was crying. Forgiving Gaston for turning on him.. that was truly Lefou. One that could not hold a grudge for long and would always forgive. Slowly he faded. His words forced out of him in struggled breathes. "Le Duo always.." It felt like enough for the little man to smile. A smile that could light up the village.. that could calm him. Gaston died with his friend holding him...


End file.
